The ultimate bit rate at which a digital wireless communications system may communicate data may be derived using Shannon's well-known approach to information theory (commonly referred to as the Shannon limit). The ultimate bit rate is based on a number of different parameters including (a) total radiated power at the transmitter, (b) the number of antenna elements at each site, bandwidth, (c) noise power at the receiver, (d) characteristics of the propagation environment, etc. For wireless transmission in a so-called Rayleigh fading environment, the ultimate bit rate could be enormous, e.g., hundreds of bits per second per Hz for a system employing 30 antennas at both the transmitter and receiver and experiencing an average signal-to-noise ratio of 24 dB. Heretofore, systems that were built with the aim of achieving high bit rates did not come close to Shannon's ultimate bit rate. The bits rate associated with such systems was, at most, one or two orders of magnitude below the Shannon limit. The main reason for this is that prior art developers did not appreciate the problems that had to be solved in order to build a system that communicates at a rate that approached an appreciable fraction of the Shannon limit.